Figure in bottom right corner shows rainfall over last 24hrs – 33.9mm

Hi Guys

The excessive rainfall this week has prompted me to post a mini-update as I know a number of you are concerned that there’s been a huge amount of rain over a short period of time and more is forecast. As you can see from the above, here in Market Harborough we received 33.9mm today, which is the highest daily figure I’ve ever recorded and one that turned the town into a flood basin. I’ve never seen so much water everywhere, ditches became streams and streams became torrents. I was mountain-biking tonight and geez, I’ve never seen anything like it…

As for golf courses, the picture below shows how my local club (thanks Chris) fared, the ‘river’ below is normally an access road onto the course !

Immediate Outlook

Overnight a new band of rain is moving into south-west, west Munster and during the early hours, that band will move eastwards across Ireland, arranged in a vertical line. As we move into the morning, that rain band reaches Wales, Western Scotland and the west of England and pushes eastwards slowly, so that means more heavy rain for these areas, that’s after the 20 – 25mm I’ve seen recorded just for today. Through the afternoon that vertical rain band reaches from Plymouth up to Newcastle and continues to track eastwards into The Midlands by early evening. It’s always difficult to predict, but I think this rain band will bring between 8-12mm tomorrow to westerly and central areas, less so for the east of England. (Don’t hold me to that) By the early hours of Friday, that rain band is set to clear the east coast of the U.K to leave a cool, but dry day for the end of the week.

Unfortunately that’s not the end of it, because in the early hours of Saturday morning, a new band of potentially heavy rain pushes into the south / south-west of England and is set to track northwards, reaching The Midlands by early morning. Again this rain is set to fall heaviest on an already flooded west coast of U.K , Wales and The Midlands, so I expect more flooding here for Saturday I’m afraid. That rain may well take all day to move across the country, so expect a high daily figure for the above-mentioned areas. (15-20mm possibly) Sunday sees another rain front into the south-west of England and Wales early doors, tracking diagonally across country through the day, so more rain (6mm upwards maybe) expected.

The early part of next week appears unsettled (6-8mm more rain), but all the time the temperature will be dropping and as predicted earlier in the week, we’re in for a raw one. The weather is set to dry up from mid-week, with temperatures dropping big time; mid-single figure daytime temperatures and a dull outlook so maybe no night frost because of the cloud cover. Winds look to be from the coldest direction IMHO, the north-east, and strong with it.

Bit of a crap forecast I know, my apologies..

Mark Hunt